Ran Asakawa Porn Star

Ran Asakawa is a famous and extremely prolific Japanese model and AV idol who made her debut in the adult entertainment field in 2001. In 2003, after making more adult videos than any other AV idol in Japan within one year, she and her agency petitioned the Guinness World Records for inclusion in their book.

Ran Asakawa was born in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan on 4 September 1980. Her first sexual encounter happened when she was 19 and was with a businessman. She says, however, that her first fully pleasurable experience wasn't until about the 10th time.

Asakawa finished high school and began junior college. When she realized that she couldn't make much money doing part time work she decided to start doing adult videos, and later explained, "I wanted to study to get a decent wage but I can't do that while I have a regular 9-5 job, right? So I picked AVs." She had thought about stripping but decided that the hours were too long. She says she cried after making her first video "wondering what I was doing to myself". She finally got to like sex on camera but keeps her eyes closed from embarrassment.

At first she was not a popular performer because of her mature looks at a time when very young looking girls were the fashion in porn and she did only about 10 videos in her first six months. However, that changed and Asakawa and her modeling agency submitted an application to the Guinness Book of World Records for making 212 adult videos within the year of 2002, a number unprecedented in the 20-year history of AV in Japan. The next year (2003), she outdid her previous record by appearing in 304 videos but announced her retirement at the end of the year. Her total output in Japan including later re-issues and compilations numbers nearly 800 videos.

In late 2003 the Taipei Times reported that Asakawa had come to Taiwan with the hopes of expanding her career there. Although Asakawa retired from Japanese AV work, in 2004 she did appear in a number of "uncensored" videos - those without the mosaic pixellation to obscure the genitals found in all standard Japanese adult videos. At least some of the videos were produced in Taiwan.

Asakawa is quite a popular performer in Chinese-speaking areas where she is known as Wu Tenglan and she has an entry under that name in the Chinese language Wikipedia. In 2006, rumors began circulating on Chinese websites that Asakawa had died in June 2006 of either cancer or renal failure. The rumors were quickly answered by Asakawa's agent on her official website assuring Chinese fans that she was alive and well.